Conflict Management
... and why some couples struggle with it.
Conflict is inevitable in all relationships, romantic or not. So, managing conflict is a key life-skill, but it’s a pity that our education system doesn’t prepare us for this. Instead, we are left to the mercy of our social circumstances to observe and pick up coping mechanisms, often, less than ideal ones.
When I wrote about the hierarchy of marital needs, I briefly alluded to a conflict management being critical to a healthy relationship. Given how important this topic is, I think it merits its own post.
Some couples fight explosively, some not at all. Every other couple engages in a sort of dance where only one of them is talking and the other one has shut off. It’s as if they’ve lost their voice, and are completely incapable of managing a conflict.
Ending up in a relationship with someone whose conflict resolution style is markedly different from yours is more common than most people believe it to be. Mathematically speaking, the odds are 50%. Psychologically speaking, the odds are probably higher (although it’s hard to quantify it).
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The interaction between two individuals in a relationship makes for an interesting study. If I can generalise, there are broadly four types of interactions when it comes to conflict resolution among couples:
The most common type is the one where one partner engages in conflict resolution while the other one tries to avoid it. This has a lower likelihood of resolution compared to the one where both engage, but it’s definitely higher than when both parties shut off and sweep the issues under the rug (which is a ticking time bomb). I find this pattern rather interesting.
There’s a lot of pent up frustration when one person shuts off because the quiet one perceives words as escalation, so quietens down further, whereas the one who’s screaming perceives silence as fuel and screams louder.
The more one partner engages, the more the other disengages. So you see, they get stuck in an unresolvable tangle, and spiral downwards. Neither of them is able to empathise with the other, and ends up feeling alienated in their relationship. Both partners begin to feel lonely while not actually being alone.
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In my relationship coaching practice, I meet a lot of people who are afraid of conflict, and feel threatened by their partners’ need to resolve conflicts. They freeze when their partner even so much as expresses dissent. They feel alienated from their partners, gradually lose trust and intimacy in their relationships.
Initially, both partners may feel shocked to witness a difference in their conflict resolution styles, but after a while, the pattern sets in and repeats on auto-pilot if the couple hasn’t actively tried to find a middle ground. Familiarity breeds contempt and they feel more and more hopeless over the years.
So, I started thinking about what may possibly influence this behaviour in fully grown rational adults who are fully intentional about making their marriage work, yet struggle to manage a conflict while in it.
Digging deeper into early experiences of my clients, especially the relationships they’d witnessed, such as those of their parents’, I started uncovering a few patterns, albeit a bit Freudian, around why some people go quiet (outside of inherent personality traits or developmental challenges):
1. Turbulent parental relationship
Growing up, if you’ve seen your parents argue a lot with each other, you are likely to develop a deep seated fear of conflict. This happens because you are not directly involved in their conflict, and being just a child, you have no influence over its resolution. That can feel scary.
Repeated episodes of such conflicts re-enforce a belief in your "inability to influence” a conflict. Hence, every time there is a conflict, you assume the role of the “helpless child” who cannot resolve the disagreement, and has to simply watch on quietly.
This response is so deeply embedded in you that you don’t realise that you are now an adult, very much a party to the conflict (not in the audience), and if anyone can help resolve it, it’s you.
2. Authoritative/ Over-critical parent
Some parents can be overly-critical with their children, always watching and protecting them from risks and failures “for their own good”. They are authoritative, discourage dissent and hold their children to unreasonable standards.
But not all children are alike. Some children are more sensitive than others. So, when parental criticism crosses a certain threshold, he/ she starts to internalise the criticism and may develop a hypersensitivity to rejection or rejection sensitive dysphoria. The child gets used to not speaking up for themselves, and taking it all quietly.
When these people grow up, and someone is critical of their views, they imagine being in the same parent-child relationship without agency to voice their opinion, discuss or negotiate. They have no confidence to engage in a healthy discussion.
They automatically shut off, believing that the other person holds more power, it is futile to even try to reason with the other person. What they don’t realise is that they are now an adult, in an equal relationship, with the opportunity to speak up, be heard, be understood, and more importantly, negotiate.
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So, how do you break free from these unhelpful coping mechanisms?
It’s not easy. Sometimes, you may not even be aware of your conflict resolution style unless someone (most likely your spouse) has explicitly given you that feedback. Even after you become aware of your behaviour, you may have trouble acknowledging that it is impacting your relationship and that you may have to work on it to produce different outcomes.
If you do decide to work on it, it’s a long road to change, possibly with the help of a qualified professional even, hinging on your intent and perseverance. Conflict resolution is a key life-skill, if you want to be successful in your relationships, romantic or not. So, may be it’s an investment worth making?
Change is scary, especially when you’ve internalised your behaviour as being an extension of your individual personality. Someone else asking you to change something that you’ve picked up as a child to soothe yourself feels like a violation. But when a certain coping mechanism is no longer serving you, change can be useful.
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If you are not the one who goes mute, but you have a partner who does, how do you cope with your partner’s silence?
It’s a good idea to give them feedback - tell them how their conflict resolution skills are impacting their relationship with you, and how it makes you feel.
Once you’ve been vocal about your feelings and needs, allow them some space and time to acknowledge their behaviour, make the decision to improve their conflict management skills and work on it.
It’s not easy to stand by and watch your partner work through this at snail’s pace, but remember that it’s not easy to acknowledge and de-condition years of programming. The end of their transformation is hopefully worth waiting for?
It takes a certain level of trust in oneself and the partner to be able to express freely in a relationship, even when it’s an unpleasant conversation. So, if you are able to get to a state where both partners are engaged in resolving a conflict, that represents a level of trust and this trust further feeds into your collective ability to resolve conflicts.
So, the key is to build that positive momentum around trust and freedom to express, which in turn builds intimacy in a relationship (which is never a given).
What I’d reading/ watching/ writing/ listening to:
I’ve read a few graphic books on war stories over the last couple of weeks:
Asperger’s Syndrome: I was recommended this cool series on ASD, which is simple and easy to understand if you have an Aspie in your life.
The Mental Health Industry: I’ve been discussing mental healthcare with a lot of people lately, and so decided to document my learnings, in the hope of it leading to more such discussions.
Shapely Gal song: Savage by Bahari
It’s like I’m reading incidents of my life.